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Friday, 16 September 2005

Coming to 40 years of age, one is at times deluded into thinking; all that could be seen has been seen such that one is hardly ever lost for words. Generally, one is hardly ever lost for words.

However, it was with utter incredulity that I viewed a clip of a young cyclist who was being chased down by a car, knocked off his bike and when he took to running was run over by the car.

Well, that is unbelievable in the least, it would have me calling the police in no time, taking photos with my mobile phone and recording everything that would lead to definitely getting adequate and speedy redress.

The occupants of that car should and would justifiably rot in jail if there was any justice in this world. Well, I do wonder if there is any justice in this world at times - Selah! [A biblical punctuation in the Psalms signifying pausing for thought].

As word would have it, someone got fined and had 5 penalty points applied to their driver's license further along the line 10,000 pounds ended up in someone’s account with a statement of utter regret - you will note, jail never featured in the whole episode.

Going over the detail again

The occupants of the car were the police, the evidence of being chased down and run over was recorded from a police helicopter during the a supposed drug raid that had them chasing after an entirely innocent man of colour in England in 1999.

The cyclist was at the receiving end of the fine, penalty and compensation after 5 years; however, for 6 years the police used every sleight of hand to prevent the publishing of the footage of that utterly despicable activity of law enforcement.

The reason this issue is in the news is because that footage finally saw the light of day having been extricated through the vagaries of the Freedom of Information Act, the police having run of out the state security excuses of concealing information that portrays them in the worst of light.

One is almost at point of sympathising with the police in those circumstances, we cannot afford to have civil society knowing that the police could be that reckless - even that does not begin to describe my pique. Basically, we need to be able to retain confidence in law enforcement, but NOT at any cost.

Closing comments

The body of evidence developing from this story and many others that inform my opinion can be summed up as follows; whilst there is a case for running away from the police if you are an ethnic minority most especially if you are innocent and blameless to escape the privation of getting beaten up, it appears if you do run you might suffer the greater privation of losing your life.

Our cyclist escaped with sufficient injuries to scar him for life, Jean Charles de Menezes unfortunately did not, apparently, and neither was he running from the police.

This is all regrettable, more so regrettable when those who are meant to protect turn against those they are meant to protect.